I Yam What I Yam
In this day of RSS feeds and managed digital information, I have a few old school rituals that are really not much to brag about. Four or five out of seven mornings, I read the remnants of our local paper, and I have a few touchstones: four comics (Mutts,Pearls Before Swine, Baby Blues and Dilbert), three horoscopes (Aries, Taurus and Aquarius), the business section when it exists, and Miss Manners. It's an odd combo, but like English Breakfast tea, it seems to set my mornings off right. I'd like to tell you that I devour the Times (New York and London), and scour the FT and the Journal, but that's just not my two dog, two kid, sweet husband and small publishing house reality right now.
In Mutts for the last few days the squirrels were throwing acorns at comic book characters. Betty Boop, Popeye, etc. When they bonked Popeye he shouted "I yam what I yam." Kind of a throwaway comic, but it struck me as so cosmic. That's pretty much where I live right now. Acorn, Popeye, segue to cosmic. I started thinking about my beloved Nacho Libre and all the other really quirky characters who just put it on the line: This is me. Deal with it. I am, I am.
That seems so easy in the comics and in Jack Black films, where even the not-so-pretty girl and the pudgy male second find eternal bliss in bucolic England or the bright lights of LA, or the out-of-shape panda becomes the Dragon Warrior. That's good stuff.
But in real life, who gets to stand up and say "I am so wabi-sabi I could just die," and have people flock to praise them for their authenticity and realness? It's pretty to think about, but it's just more complicated than that. Brene Brown has a wonderful website, Ordinary Courage, which highlights the real bravery it takes to show ourselves, just as we are, to the world at large. It's amazingly inspirational. But in practice, most of us are still little bundles of vulnerability and strong feelings trying to put on the strongest shells we can to protect ourselves. Life can be rough on sensitive souls. Strike that: is rough.
But, as my father always says, "If it don't kill you, it makes you stronger." No lie, Daddy. It's a strength not like a Popeye bicep, but more like a very subtle yoga move deep down in your core. And it's much harder to achieve, much harder to judge with metrics, and virtually impossible to describe.
So, looking for this kind of strength, these inner resources or fortitude or whatever you want to call it, where do we find inspiration? Who is our coach? Our mentor? How do we know who is flexing these muscles deep inside their soul at any given moment: who is naturally an alpha creature, who is exhibiting ordinary courage, and who just has a good prescription?
We have just published a book called Matches in the Gas Tank. Talk about extraordinary courage. The author, Carla Powers, is a very successful corporate lawyer. She has it all, in the material girl sort of way, plus she is as grounded and smart and lovely as anyone you could hope to meet. If I had been introduced to her out at a party, I would definitely have been intimidated, would have had to reassure myself that I was not lacking. Judging my insides by her outside, it's a no-brainer. Carla could waltz through life on her successful first, second and third impressions.
Here's what awes me about her: she has chosen not to rest on the laurels of superficial impressions. Her book, her memoir, tells her real story. The story of growing up in the Radio Church of God with an abusive, alcoholic, pyromaniac father. The story of having to run away from her home and her father, just to make sure she survived physically, and later, the hard, hard steps she had to take to survive emotionally. Her story is all about a kind of deep courage that most of us won't ever have to contemplate.
Carla didn't have to share her story. it would have been so much easier to hide behind the perfect shell she had created. But in speaking up, in saying "I yam what I yam," she shows us all that we have muscles in our souls that we may never even have dreamed of flexing. Inner fortitude. The ability to stand up for who we are and what we believe in. Even when it's really, really scary.
Her book is a gift that lots of people may not be ready to accept. But every time somebody stands up, unwraps the scarf from their neck and shows who they really are, we all get stronger and braver.
So Jack, Popeye, Carla--movie star, retro cartoon and lady lawyer--I am in grateful awe of all of you. You are who you are, you yam who you yam, and with or without spinach, you fight the good fight for all of us. You are ordinary heroes.
That's extraordinary.
"Getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire's still going."
~David Foster Wallace
